Busting A Few Myths of Cloud Technology “Expensiveness”

If you are a small business owner or an entrepreneur, it is highly likely that you have already come across instances when moving to the cloud seemed perfect. But, this perfect migration comes with a cost that is still unclear to a number of organizations.

In this article, we will discuss the myths surrounding the expensiveness of cloud technology. Read on to understand how the cloud can offer you optimum support and cost-effective services.

To move in the direction of company growth and innovation, lower costs and optimized budgets play a major role. In search of this optimization, an array of organizations moves to cloud technology and start utilizing the power of remote storage.

However, several business owners and entrepreneurs are wedged in the process and struggle to achieve the automatic benefits of cloud cost-effectiveness. In fact, they fall in the endless loop of higher costs and unnecessary overheads.

This is the reason why the notion of cloud expensiveness has emerged. In reality, cloud technology, when managed with a certain level of expertise and careful executions, can deliver optimum results. Let’s see how.

Myths About the Expensiveness of Cloud Technology

Do you also think that the cloud can leave you with additional spends? If so, then check out these major myths that are believed to derail cloud initiative.

1. You Need Advanced Hardware

One of the biggest myths is the requirement of hardware. Here, we are not talking about the servers that you may need for in-house storage systems. We are talking about the potentially extensive systems and CPUs that you think you may need to purchase for the cloud.

Fortunately, the cloud removes this requirement. You can start your work with the systems you currently have. The only thing that matters here the most is an efficient internet connection which can handle the load of multiple data transactions.

In effect, cloud technology moderates several other hardware requirements which may be necessary otherwise.

• You don’t have to increase the infrastructure as the company scales, you can simply increase your cloud storage.
• You don’t have to maintain the hardware used for the storage of your business. The vendor or cloud provider will take care of this task as well.
• You don’t require large spaces and additional power to maintain the architecture. Practically, you will observe little extra to no additional power consumption with the cloud.

2. Maintenance is High

Of course, you need a team to maintain your cloud infrastructure. But, when compared to the workforce that you require for an in-house storage server, this is nothing. Sometimes, it is possible for a small organization to adjust maintenance demands with just one expert IT guy. That’s all you require.

The additional cost of maintenance that might be included in this is maintenance of your office systems which are used to access the cloud. This requirement would have been there even when the cloud technology was not being utilized. So, this maintenance cost is not really an addition to cloud implementation.

The cloud implementation doesn’t come with high maintenance. When you get in-house servers and create multiple floors with hardware to store the company’s data, then you have high maintenance requirements. When outsourcing storage such as in the cloud, your provider or vendor takes care of these maintenance tasks.

For example, if one unit crashes, your team doesn’t have to run to the rescue. The cloud provider will handle that even without you realizing that something has happened. This is because a duplicate copy of your data will be given to you immediately.

3. The Installation Takes Time

Yes, it does. There is no doubt in the fact that the installation of every new technology in the workplace is going to take time. However, it will not take weeks or months.

The time that you need during installation is for the following things:

• A few hours to install cloud technology applications.
• A few hours to plan how this implementation will be carried out organization-wide.
• A few hours or maybe days to help your staff get acquainted with the usage.
• One working day to formulate a policy for remote access of the cloud and its data.

Is it too much?

No, it is not.

Whenever an organization starts using technology for better productivity, this much time is optimum for the enhanced results. If you fail to spend this much time, the outcome will be unfavorable.

Some Additional Myths Which Can Make The Cloud Cost-Effective

The above myths remove the confusion related to the expensiveness of cloud technology. In this section, we have discussed some additional myths and misconceptions which may be stopping you from mitigating risks of the company and reducing costs further.

1. Price Should Be The Selection Criteria

To realize how functionally erroneous this is for your organization, let’s understand the nature of the cloud first.

The cloud technology can’t be considered as a commodity. Every provider of the cloud delivers services in a different manner. For example, some may differ in procedures, and others may differ in the protocols they have used.

For this reason, if you go ahead and deploy exactly equal work on two cloud vendors, you will receive different performance. In fact, you may even observe a huge difference in the performance graph.

Hence, you can’t simply look at the pricing of the cloud provider and go ahead. You need to evaluate the performance and services to understand if this provider can handle your workload without reducing your performance.

It is also necessary to understand that if you select a low performing vendor and use it for a high workload, your prices can go up significantly.

2. Bigger Virtual Server Instance May Be Good

The biggest misconception that organizations have is regarding the virtual server instance. It is often given the least importance even when this factor contributes a lot to your pricing. Meaning, a bigger instance is not always necessary.

For example, if you require only 5 GB, then purchasing 10 GB is not smart, it is a wastage. This is because you may have to incur the costing of these extra 5 GBs unnecessarily.

There is no doubt that you need extra GBs for a buffer, but this much buffer is not needed. You need to keep in mind that the cloud is scalable and you can scale on-demand.

Other than this, you need to select specific factors according to your team, such as CPU time, GPUs, etc.

Conclusion

Cloud computing now defines the way we function and utilize storage space. It can be cost-effective for every organization if managed intelligently. You can’t simply purchase a cloud instance and wait for it to optimize costs automatically. Instead, utilize the above knowledge to optimize your cloud usage according to the unique requirements of your organization.

This will help you truly optimize costs.